


prayers for sailors

by justfine



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, English Blankets, M/M, Missing Scene, Prayer, Scurvy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justfine/pseuds/justfine
Summary: They will die sailors, as God intended.
Relationships: George Kinnaird/John Lane
Comments: 28
Kudos: 33
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	1. preface

**Author's Note:**

> For the Terror Bingo prompt _it's not quick_.

_“The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers.” —_ PETER III. 12.

_*_

In the end, he will not leave her. 

_Cannot_ , George thinks, staring at the floor through his twisting fingers before settling them into a clasp. No muscle in his body would allow for it. If he leaves her, if he _walks_ , then he shall not die the way he lived, and this place—this terrible place—will take that last dignity from him.

So he volunteers to stay.

It is a great sacrifice, Crozier tells them, leaning with hands on the table, deserving of a great reward. Reward enough, though, is the semblance of themselves that may dwell on their horizon, keeping home as near as it might be at the edge of the world. John tells him so, the only one looking him in the eye. This is how they will die. This is what they choose.

After his farewells, George does not watch them go. _Cannot_. It feels as much an abandoning of him as it does of the ship, though he cannot put his finger on why. They have already left him before, when the caulker’s mate’s blood was not yet dry, running in tune with the precarious tilt towards _Terror’s_ bow. Still that strange, haunting bewilderment on Lieutenant Little’s face plays in his mind, caught in the twitch of his hands and lips. _Why would I leave her?_ George recalls thinking, daring not to speak to the lieutenant’s confusion. _How could I?_

Around him, _Terror_ groans against the hold of the encroaching ice, crying for those departing. Weep not for them, he thinks, but for me. Yours is the bosom I will die in.

“Mr Kinnaird,” then comes the voice of Lieutenant Irving from the companionway. He carries a small, black book in his bandaged hands and offers it out for George to take. “For the men, if you should find yourself wanting in prayer.”

George hesitates.

“None of us are of your Church, sir,” he says.

Lieutenant Irving keeps his arm outstretched. There is blood beneath his fingernails. There is blood beneath George’s. A scab has wept on the top of his arm since Carnivale and it is hardly likely to close now. The lieutenant was singing that night, before the flames, but he can’t remember what he sounds like. He only remembers his wings. 

“It’s hardly popery,” he says, but not unkindly.

As a favour between dying men, George takes it, holding it tightly in gloved hands. Flimsy, it bends, falling open under the pressure. _O God_ , the top of the page reads, _have mercy upon us, for we are weak and sore vexed_. The ink is faded in places. The pages are a tobacco-stained yellow. They smell of it.

“Thank you, sir,” George says, closing it again and bringing it to his person. “We’ll make good use of it, I’m sure.”

This, tenuous as it may be, is enough to alleviate something that has been pressing quite heavily on the lieutenant. George can tell in the way he breathes, like it no longer pains him—like he has finally escaped that fire. A terrible business it must be, trying to save so many souls already so close to God. He straightens in his slops as he nods his approval.

“You will be rewarded for this, Mr Kinnaird,” he says then, quieter this time. “Far beyond earthly measures.”

The lieutenant’s words sit with him well into the deathly silence of _Terror’s_ emptiness, eight souls aboard, the prayer book tucked beneath his pillow. He braces himself on the edges of his hammock, feeling the tension of its movements pressing to the growing tenderness in his back. Soon there will be no sleeping on his back, he knows, and the wounds of his transgressions will be once again shown to the world—but not yet. It is a slow thing, after all. For now, they hold steadfast as faith.

For now, he is only dying.


	2. morning prayer

_“Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof.”_ _—_ ISAIAH XLII. 10.

_*_

“It’s Sunday, sir,” George says by way of introduction. “I thought I might—”

By the door of the warrant officers’ mess, George holds the prayer book out in silent explanation towards the boatswain. After just twelve hours in his possession, it has already fallen ill to his unrest, the pages crumpled at their edges and blackened by a guiding finger. He has read it twice already. He has not yet slept.

At the table, John Lane sits quite easily, hands in the pockets of his trousers. Before him is a map of King William Land, taken from the quarters of the captain. The door is shut now, George had noticed earlier, havering in the companionway, and likely to never be opened again. All well with it, he supposes; a ship can be without her captain, but a captain cannot be without his ship.

It will be captains Fitzjames and Crozier at the forefront of his prayers, he thinks.

“Give a service to the men?” John finishes for him. “You can read?”

Having placed many an _x_ in place of his name over the years, the surprise in the officer’s voice neither offends nor discourages him. Instead, he bristles with a strange sense of pride as his hand tightens around the book. “Aye, sir, well enough,” he says, then stops. A lump fills his throat. “Mr Hornby taught me how.”

George ducks his head down, chin to his chest, and thinks of the mate. Perfectly kind and well-versed in all things of George’s interest, in his mind Mr Hornby breathes, walks, talks; never without a word, all his tales are joyfully told. _A most unharmful amusement,_ he had told him of reading, _but a most harmful absence_. They had spent a great many hours between dogwatches practicing, until, they joked, he might one day read the writing on the wall.

“Heaven rest his soul,” John mutters, bringing his clasped hands to rest on the table.

George gives a solemn nod.

Not wanting to dwell, he begins again, “About the service—”

“I’m not the captain,” John says, quite ignorant, perhaps, that George has jumped to duty at his bosun’s pipe more than he has at the orders of the captain. “You don’t need my permission.”

Nodding his understanding, George says, “Aye, sir, it’s your help I need.” He opens the prayer book and begins to move towards the table. “It says here the service should start with singing a Pslam or Hymn,” he says, setting it down with a finger jabbed to the page reading _Morning Service_ , “but I don’t know which one.”

It is then, quite gently, that John takes his hand to move it from the page. They are warm, he notices in the brief moment they encase his. Slim. Clean. George stares down at his own as he steps away with a clearing of his throat, fingers appearing from his gloves. He might have bitten down his nails to their beds if the taste of blood in his mouth did not scare him and such an act did not embarrass him.

“Any would do, I’d imagine,” John says, flicking idly through the pages.

He is, as far as George has been able to gather, as beholden to his faith as any man once on this ship; less so, say, than Lieutenant Irving, but more so, without question, than Captain Crozier. It seems the narrative of all of those that are left; quite ordinary in their beliefs, quite temperate in their ways. Not a man among them needed.

“Have you a favourite?”

John laughs, though it comes out as nothing more than a huff of his breath.

“Can’t say I do, no,” he says, splaying his hand over the open page, flattening a crease. It has been annoying him. “Though I’m told it’s something we become most certain of at the end—the last thing we hear, even.”

“Then I should hate if the men ruined it,” George says, making John laugh again. This time, it rings, and George must turn his face to hide the flush of delight that creeps across his grimy cheeks. How complacent the mind gets when it starts to go, he thinks. How true to one’s constitution one becomes. “Is there a hymn book spare? I know the officers took much of their books with them—”

“As if they should need them,” John says in a grumble.

George, though, cannot bring himself to judge them for the frivolity of their comforts taken. Man is, in this life, a sum of his earthly possessions. Books and coal are not so different when they are burning in the fire.

It is in this moment that George realises John has risen from his seat to search through a cabinet. He stands idle as he waits, not watching, stretching the edges of his gloves with his fingertips in distraction. If he looks, then John might look back, and only this morning had he crouched before his seaman’s chest to study the stranger in his tiny mirror, tracing the black crescents carved beneath his eyes. He touches them again.

John catches him.

“Are you alright?” he asks. There is a hymn book in his hand now. _Christ in song, for the use of Christians_. “You look—”

“I’ve got it,” he says, and John knows what he means. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s hard to sleep.”

John nods and reaches up to touch his fringe to the side. A fool’s errand, it falls back into place. George should like to fix it, but he cannot move. He fears, despite an ailing mind, the repercussions of such actions. But it is not the sufferings of a physical nature that frighten him; he could never tolerate the solitude imposed by such a disposition.

At last, he moves again, reaching for the prayer book and placing it atop of the hymn one. He offers them out to George, his grip on them tight. George can see the tension in his knuckles, shining white.

“Try being kind to yourself then,” John says.

George says nothing to it, reaching out to take the books. Like the dead in the sea, John does not give them up easy. Their fingers only touch because George makes sure they do, deliberate with the stroke of his fingertips. If John notices—and God, he must—he says nothing of it either. Finally he lets them go.

It seems the wind against _Terror’s_ port side will have the last word between them until John says, “I’ve a request to make of the service, if I might?”

“Aye, sir?”

“Pray for leads,” he says, to which George smiles. He imagines the sea breaking from the ice as it once was stilled, delivering them, briefly, from His temporal judgements. “I would like to sail her again. Just for a while.”

It is this with which George finds himself motivated, chewing down the ends of a pencil as he flips through the prayer book in practice, hymns marked with a fold in their page. He licks the taste of graphite from his gums and smudge of grey from his lips before standing to speak, smiling at John’s prompt appearance at the back of the deck. He touches his hands to the page so that they might not shake.

“O Lord our God,” he begins, “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desirest not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn unto Thee and live; and hast sent Thine only and well-beloved Son to suffer the cruel death of the cross…”


	3. prayer for friends at home

_“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” —_ JOHN XIV. 27.

*

In the captain’s stores, all that is left is gin.

George shivers as he extends his arm to hold a lantern aloft, the oil fizzing against the cold air by his ear. The bottle John turns in his hand reflects the light, the liquid sloshing with that unmistakable sound. He could do with a drink, he thinks, rolling his shoulder from its ache and squeezing it with his free hand. He would drink the whole bottle if there were not easier ways to die.

Then, John wanders from the light, asking, “Will you take a drink?”

“Here?” he answers to the dark, then follows his voice, fingers splaying along the edge of a crate for balance as he climbs against the precarious cant of the ship. _Terror_ groans against the frozen sea to which she is bound. The ice creaks. “You can’t mean to—”

“Oh, why not?” John says, perching himself atop of a crate. “We can scarcely drink when we’re dead.”

It is hardly a point well put, but George finds himself in no need of an excuse as he takes his place beside him, putting the lantern between them. His body wilts forward with a strange exhaustion as John pulls the cork from the bottle and lets it drop to the floor, scattering the rats beneath them. George rubs his hands over his thighs, watching his breath dance and become air before him. He wonders how those little bastards survive down here.

“To not dying in that bloody void,” John toasts.

He takes a sip then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he passes the bottle over the top of the lantern. Again, their fingers touch, deliberate. George finds he likes this game, teetering at the edge of the world. With a drink he might fall off.

“To not dying in that bloody void,” he repeats, then mimics John’s actions, but taking a deeper drink. Vile in taste, it burns pleasantly where George is most hollow. “No wonder Crozier didn’t drink that.”

John hums as he takes the gin back and has another sip. “I hardly think it was the taste that discouraged him,” he mutters quietly against the rim, as if not to be heard at all.

Whatever the insinuations of John’s sentiments, George thinks of Crozier, of how he had not been able to look him in the eye that last day. Gaze downcast, he had not doubted the sincerity of his hope or gratitude, but now he wishes he had seen it in his eyes. Finally, down to their last tether, they were equal as men, doing all there was to do to survive. He should have looked him in the eye. He should have.

“Where do you suppose they are?” he asks.

John sighs, head tilting to the side as he thinks. In his lap, his fingers twitch across an invisible landscape.

“No closer to England than we are,” he says at last.

George thinks of England, of Hastings, of the road from London descending from the hill through an avenue of trees to take him home. He thinks of the clear stream which he would follow through the town until it emptied itself into the harbour where the fishing boats bobbed merrily in the water. He thinks of the exposed shores and rough seas. Always the sea. The sea that would have him. The sea that would take him home.

He swallows, audible, and thumbs idly at the hem of his trousers in distraction.

“Have you a girl at home?” John asks then. “Or many?” He reaches over to give George’s cheek a sharp pat from which he tries to recoil. “A face like that; you must have one in every Cinque port.”

George, suitably horrified at the mere thought, takes a swing of gin again. It burns his cracking lips. He licks them. The cold air bites the dampness left behind. It is a kiss he is well used to. With teeth, he thinks, closing his eyes. They always kissed him with teeth.

“No,” he says honestly, “I’ve no one.”

“Any family?”

George shakes his head, a sad smile on his face. John’s face contorts between sympathy and pity beside him, but in the end not really settling on either. His eyebrows lift as though in disbelief, taking a drink to stifle whatever it is he might want to say. George twiddles his thumbs. It is not such a bad existence in knowing there is no one suffering in your absence.

“I’m sorry if I—”

“You didn’t,” he says, reaching over to touch John’s arm. “It’s like Mr Hornby said: to Hell with all these bloody tragedies.”

John is looking down at where George’s fingers still curl into his jacket sleeve when he asks, “And what is it that he recommended in their place?”

It was—George turns, staring into the dark corner aft as though it is the murky edges of his memory. His lips twitch around an answer, mimicking those of Mr Hornby, the picture of him so clear in his mind but silent. The room smelt of old paper, the light was dying, and Mr Genge had just walked in a moment later with some oil to refill it, he recalls, but cannot remember what it was that he was saying.

Finally, George takes his hand from John and brushes his fingers up his temple.

“Romance,” he lies.

“Perhaps they’d be useful,” John says, shifting where he sits, turning his body towards George. His thigh nudges the lantern, sending the light shivering up the side of him it illuminates. “Never had the slightest clue how to work my way around all that nonsense. Always thought making a sailor’s wife of a woman was as good as making her a widow.”

“What’s a little mortal separation when you can dwell with them forever somewhere better?” George says.

John cracks a smile, takes a drink, says, “You’ve been reading that prayer book again.”

He has, but only because Mr Lawrence has been waking up during all hours of the night this last week and weeping so terribly that only God would do for comfort. As it goes, he dreams of his wife and falls into a terrible state when he rolls over and finds she is not there. It is the most terrible sight, and a damn hard thing to sleep through.

“Little else to do,” he offers with a shrug.

Nodding in understanding, John is about to speak again when the sound of footsteps comes from the orlop. George scrambles to attention like a redcoat and grabs the lantern just as Mr Smith drops down the ladder, huffing and puffing in his haste.

“Mr Lane,” he says, still without breath, clutching to George’s arm to stay upright, “leads—to the southeast. _There’s leads_.”

They care little for the smashed bottle of gin on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> get in boys, we're discovering the northwest passage!


	4. for one who is insensible and delirious

_“For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”_ — PSALMS XCI. 11.

*

At last, _Terror_ sails the icy seas.

She heaves from her capture, throwing her crew with carless abandon, but George feels no ache or bruise as John calls for them to lay aloft and loose the main sails. It is a thrill to climb the ladder with mottled arms, the cold air scorching down his lungs and setting his entire body afire. Finally, he thinks, feeling the rough press of rope beneath his gloves as he knots it—finally he is a sailor again.

She is an intrepid old thing, back in the waters that maimed her so badly once before that not for another day would she have stayed afloat. George cannot imagine her staggering over the seas back to England now, but he knows her capable. She will out fare them all, Mr Smith always says, and George is not inclined to disagree.

He thinks, later, as he climbs her ratlines to the top, of what will become of her when they are gone. Their coffin, will she carry them in ice to the coast? Will she shatter there? Will she sink? Will she disappear quickly, lost beneath the waves? He would like to think so, if only for the magnificent grave it would be. George hooks his elbow around a rung of the ladder as she climbs over a wave, threatening to throw him. He presses his cheek to the rope. From somewhere down below, John shouts for him to be careful.

At the top, he looks to the land through Mr Terry’s monocular. They hug the shore, as per Crozier orders, and keep an eye out for the men. There has been no sign of them thus far.

George shakes his head at John as he drops back onto the deck.

Afterwards, they go below, exhausted. Such a ship is not designed for such few men, and less are they now with old Mr Thompson’s mind going. George takes his drink of rum before taking the short trip up to where the engineer sleeps, knocked out, quite soundly, by a concoction of the powders and potions left behind by Mr Goodsir. Every man’s a doctor now.

He steps quietly inside, then closes the partition behind him. As he takes a chair from the hook on the wall, he retrieves the prayer book from his pocket and turns it to the page most worn. He sighs as he stabs a finger to the page, eyes unsettled in the change from the glittering gleam of the sea and to the dark cabin light.

“Lord God, merciful and gracious, who knowest our frame, and hast compassion on our infirmities, look down in pity, we beseech Thee, on Thy servant, for whom, in his present sorely afflicted state of body and of mind, we desire to intercede.” George pauses, looking upon Mr Thompson’s peaceful face. “We earnestly pray, O God, that it may please Thee to enlighten his darkness—”

A noise from behind him disrupts him. It is John stepping through the door, quietly, motioning for George to continue as he too takes a chair from the wall.

“—a-and to restore to him the use of all his faculties, that he may be able clearly to dis-discern the things which belong to his ever-lasting peace.” George’s face twitches in John’s direction to look at him, but he is not looking at him. Instead, he is closer to Mr Thompson, a hand clutched to his hand. “Uhh—”

“Continue,” John says gently.

So George does. He licks his lips, loses his place, until finally he reaches the end. John’s _amen_ is barely an echo of his own. He does not let go of the engineer’s hand.

“What do you think happens to a man’s soul when he goes mad?” John asks over his shoulder. “Is it unafflicted or is it the very cause—”

“I don’t know,” George says quickly, giving his cheek a scratch.

It is not entirely true; he knows what he thinks will happen, but he dares not speak it aloud. In fear, he thinks, of being wrong, because he believes, most adamantly, that such an earthly condition is as of much a concern to the safety of the soul as a missing limb. God is merciful—he stands before the men and says it every Sunday, and he is quite firmly on his way to believing so without clause or stipulation.

“You should eat,” John says then. “You must be starving.”

George nods because, yes, he is starving, but he does not move for a moment. His body is sore, shattered to the point of misuse. He swipes his thumb over the leather face of the book, mimicking John’s own movements over Mr Thompson’s knuckles. _Hold my hand like that_ , he thinks, eyes unmoving from the motion, _but please do not wait until I go mad_.

“Aye, sir.”

George stands and puts the chair back. He pauses, briefly, staring at the back of John’s head, his dark silhouette. Cut, he thinks, from a dream he might have had once—when love, despite all things, was still possible. There were boys out there that would not bite his lips, he knows, and lay their hands on him gently. They might teach him to do the same.

In his hands, the prayer book bends.

“He’ll be fine, sir,” George says, speaking only because John wants to hear it. “After, I mean. His soul.”

Once again, John looks over his shoulder. His fringe, overgrown, tickles his eyes and he smiles. George smiles back, unable to help himself. A nod of understanding passes between them both as _Terror_ lurches on open water, ice battering her hull. George is sailor enough to stand stable.

“Call me John,” he says, then turns, leaving George to try it on his lips.

John, he mouths later, smiling as he stabs a knife through the top of a tin and sits down to have his dinner.


	5. evening prayer

_“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth our fear: because fear hath torment.”_ — JOHN IV. 18.

*

As it is, George cannot sleep.

Restless, he turns in his hammock, pressing his cheek to its edge, dangling his arm to the floor. He wiggles his fingers, watching the lantern’s light shine on the grime that coats them. It reminds him of soot, of Carnivale, of the whole world on fire, leaving everything varnished in black. He closes his eyes, smells— _burning_. He opens his eyes. All is well aboard.

But it will not leave him, the mere idea. In the crook of his mind _Terror_ burns and there is nowhere to run. _I can’t swim_ , he thinks dimly, listening to the water outside. What he would not give to drown.

Instead, he thinks, rising from his bed, he must die slowly. He must disintegrate like decaying timber, bleeding from every pore, aching in every joint. He must come undone at his transgressions, the scar tissue weakening across his back. He can feel it as he does the buttons of his shirt and pulls on his coat, encasing himself in his own putrid smell of rot.

George looks around. Everyone is sleeping and snoring, but there is still light coming from the warrant officers’ mess. He leans against a column, thinking for a moment, before pushing off into the light’s direction like a moth, trying to keep his footsteps noiseless.

He must succeed in some part because John looks surprised to see him.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks.

George closes the door and holds his own arm by the elbow, swaying in non-committal response.

“I can get you something for that,” John tells him, rubbing his fingers into his eyes. He could do with a little something too, but George does not dare say that aloud. “If you want.”

Declining with another shake of his head, George steps further inside the room until he is standing at the edge of the table adjacent to the boatswain. He motions, as if asking to sit, and is ushered down by John to do so. Before them, on the table, is the same old unfinished map of the Arctic Archipelago. George smooths down the edge closest to him, eyes wandering. Such a queer place to mistake for home, he thinks. 

“Where are we?” George asks.

John, resting his cheek in his palm, traces his finger down the side of King William Land, but not particularly far. George swallows, watery in the throat as though about to cry. In his muscles and bones, it seems they have travelled an unquantifiable distance.

“Oh,” he whispers.

“I don’t think we’ll be making Back River before the leads close up again,” John says, but not mournfully so. He looks at George, steady. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

Atop the map, George twists his fingers together.

“Aye, I do.”

“For the time being, we’ll keep south, and try to find shelter on the southern coast here,” John says after a moment, letting his finger travel along the map. It reminds him of Beechey Island, of a marked grave he will not get. “If we don’t, we’ll be caught in the pack and taken—” John trails off, finger carrying south to a collection of small islets against which George can only assume _Terror_ might be crushed.

It hardly seems an adequate way for her to go.

“Then I suppose we better get her to harbour then,” George says, “to keep her well and—and make sure, whoever finds her, knows we meant to put her there. That we didn’t abandon her.”

John nods.

“Sounds as good an order as any,” he says, and George tenses, not wanting to have implied— “Away with that look on your face, George,” he continues, reaching over to give him a light smack across his cheek. “It’s liable to get stuck like that in this cold.”

The only thing that does not move, however, is the hand upon his face. On the edges of his vision, he sees it, but the touch does not feel real. Fingertips curl around the side of his jaw, rub lazily against the apple of his cheek. He presses into the centre of his palm, nuzzling further into it. If the scratch of his unkept beard bothers John, he does not pull his hand away to let him know.

“Do you think it a common thing for men to do the most terrible things at the end of the world?” John asks.

“Not terrible things,” George says, a thumb catching the inner edge of his lips as he speaks. “Just human things.”

At this, John stands, but he does not lift his hand. Instead, it is an axis for which his body he moves, coming to a rest on the table. George puts his hand on his knee, cannot help himself, and tilts his head up with the subtle guidance of John’s fingertips. Gentler is his touch, George notes in the margins of his memory, than all the men before him.

“Human things?” John echoes.

There is something rancid between them, metallic. George can taste it in the air, on his own tongue. He nods and a second hand finds his face, holding him more firmly. There is no room for God, he thinks. 

It is like this that John kisses him. A mere touch of their lips, it is the locking together of his own muscles that keep him prone, eyes riveted shut so as not be torn from this dream. It is only when the pressure leaves his lips that he presses forward, startled from his stupor by the fear that this might be the last time, and that John may come to his senses.

But he does not.

From the table he moves to stand, pulling George with him by the collar. Chest to chest, George’s hands find purchase on the flanks of John’s coat, tightening as firmly as his aching fingers will allow. They kiss again, lips in a tight line. 

“You—”

John rests his forehead to George’s, the taste of his breath catching on his lips. One of them is cold and the other is sweating, but in that moment, it is undiscernible as to who is who.

“Please don’t—”

“I won’t,” George says, though he has no idea what to. “I won’t. I won’t.”

So they kiss, suspended in their doom, and then kiss again, and again, and again, until their lips lose feeling and George forgets he is dying.


	6. for one whose sickness has been long continued

_“In the world ye shall have tribulations: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”_ — JOHN XVI. 33.

*

He is, he knows, nearing the end of his appointed time here.

It occurs to him, in the sense of time, as he leans his elbows onto his knees, slouching over on the make-do examination table. There is blood glazed into the decking beneath him, streaking down his bare back. He shivers, teeth chattering, and bows his head on his clasped hands. Dear God, he prays, let my soul depart in peace when the hour comes.

“Here,” comes John’s voice, pulling him from his prayer.

Arm outstretched, he presses a blanket to George’s chest, letting him huddle it close. It is rough, old, one of John’s; George lowers his head further, gathering it to his chin and inhaling. Of England perhaps it is no longer, but there is a familiarity to it all the same. George smiles into its folds, then up at John. A hand strokes through his hair as if to ask _all better_ , and he nods.

It is only then that John hesitates, staring at him. He slides a hand down to his face and flattens the whiskers atop his lip, building up the courage to—to do what? George shivers again, thinks _you won’t hurt me_ , though he is not entirely sure that is quite what John is afraid of.

“You never told me what you got them for,” John says when he moves, at last, to stand behind him.

He hears the drip of the rag being taken from the bowl of water. _Drip, drip, drip_. Everything is so much louder now, accentuated like they are permanently living in the dark. George shuts his eyes against the sound, sets his shoulders against the pain.

“Not for what you think,” he says.

“And what do I think?” he asks, voice closer now, warm over his skin where the air is cold.

George laughs, breath hitching when the rag meets his back and John steadies him with a hand on his shoulder, fingers curling tight. Like the beginnings of a fever, he can feel the sweat start to gather at his nape, under his arms, over his chest. It freezes against his skin in the bitter air, causing an uncomfortable itch against the blanket. He holds it firmer.

“Did you deserve it, at least?” John asks then when he does not answer.

“Aye,” he says, “I suppose.”

“Wish I’d known you before, you know, back in England,” John says, bringing the rag to him again. He feels a trickle down his spine, running a curve through the blood drying there. John, he thinks, is only speaking to distract him. “Could’ve had a bloody rare time, me and you.”

George, with not the stomach to fashion his own thoughts of home, only prompts him with, “Oh?”

“You must have been to Portsmouth in your time?” he asks, to which George nods silently. “Aye, well, I would take you there, straight from London, and show you from every bar I’ve stumbled. We’d have a proper ale, and get proper cut, and I’d give you a proper seeing to.” 

Smiling, George might allow himself another laugh if he did not fear the shake of his body against John’s increasingly indelicate touch. It is no fault of his, though; John means him no harm. But the day has been a long one, he has had a drink, and there is nothing more awful to which a sailor must attend than the bleeding wounds of his dying companion.

George hardly thinks he has the heart for it, cannot begin to imagine this in reverse. _Cowardice_ , he remembers the captain tacking to his charges suddenly, sharp like a thirteenth stroke of the cat o’ nine tails.

He might earn those lashes yet.

“I’d like that.”

“And then we’d go to sea again, together,” John continues, rag now running along the top of his shoulders. He kisses him there. “Somewhere close, or somewhere warm. All the men will ask us what we saw here, how we survived, but we won’t tell them anything. We won’t speak a word of this place. We’ll forget—like it was all a terrible dream.”

George shuts his eyes, opens them. John is kissing the top notch of his spine, his neck. He does not mind that he does not wake up somewhere new. This is quite alright.

“I reckon I could live like that,” George says.

“And then, when we’re old—‘cause we’ll live a real long fucking time, me and you—and no bloody use to anyone, we’ll get a room above a pub, and drink and smoke away the days left to us.”

While it is hardly the romance promised to him in Mr Horny’s books, George finds he does not care for the thrills of it. John is enough, he thinks, in whichever way he may have him; here, at the end of the world, or at home for the rest of his life. They are one in the same, in the end, and entirely equal in their merits.

He turns his face to John over his shoulder, lifts a hand to his cheek. There is blood pearling at John’s crown. Like Christ, George thinks, bringing their foreheads together. For the first time in a long time, he feels like weeping. He presses a kiss to the corner of John’s mouth instead, hard, searing, mumbling the words of a man on the verge of losing his mind.

“Hey,” John says, tilting his head away, running his hand over his lower back, “I meant it, living out my last days with you. Here or there, that’s how I wanna live. I ain’t suffering while I still have you. Not really.”

George fixes John’s greasy fringe, says, “Then you better find some tobacco.”


	7. prayer to be used at a funeral at sea

_“For I know that my redeemer liveth.”_ — JOB XIX. 25.

*

From atop his seaman’s chest, George watches John sew up Mr Lawrence’s casket of canvass.

Grey in his face, John moves slowly, tired. This is the second one in—well, George does not know for how long, the days and weeks indecipherable in his mind, not that there is any true use for keeping track. _It doesn’t matter_ , John tells him once, when the thought upsets him to hysteria. Fingers stroke through his hair, shushing him as he tries to breathe. _None of it matters_.

“I didn’t even know he was—” George says, then stops.

John pauses to look at him. George has trimmed the fringe of his hair so that he might see his eyes, but it still plasters across his forehead, damp from a fever.

“You should fetch your slops, George,” he says. “We’ll take him down soon.”

George’s body aches in protest as he moves, the mere thought of pulling on an extra layer somehow exhausting him down to the bone. Regardless, he does as he is requested, as if all were well, and this just any other order from the boatswain. He barely lifts his feet as he goes, barely gets his arms over his head. Some rum might do to get him through, but a dead man’s rations never go down easy.

When he is finally dressed, John is done and waiting, sitting sunken on the chair by Mr Lawrence’s side.

“I’ll take his feet,” is all George says, touching John briefly on the shoulder before walking to the end of the table. “Come on, then,” he mutters, to Mr Lawrence this time. “Off to the sea with you.”

In the end, they make it to a small inlet before the leads close, but not to shore. They are less than a mile off it, by Mr Terry’s reckoning, stranded in the middle of the bay with no time to drop her anchor down. Still, the pack will not have her, George thinks as he ascends the ladder to the upper deck, following John’s lead with Mr Lawrence at his shoulder. It is the best they can do.

On the ice, Mr Smith mans the fire hole. Having yet to wash the soot from his skin, he cuts a dark figure in the precious daylight of the white void.

“Poor bastard,” he says as they approach, taking off his hat.

Neither of them says anything as they put Mr Lawrence down in the snow, crouching for a moment to catch their breaths. John rises first, pulling George up by the underarm with him. Even then they just breathe, staring at the body in canvas between them, wondering which one of them will be next, praying to God they would not be last. To Hell with that, George thinks.

“Do you want to…” John prompts, shivering.

“Aye,” George says, before warily reaching inside his slops to retrieve the prayer book. “I’ll just—”

He opens the book at the contents page, forgetting, despite the frequency of its use, which page the funeral prayer is on. With mittens on, he fumbles through the pages until he finds the right one.

John joins Mr Smith in doffing his hat.

George clears his throat and screws his eyes to concentrate. “O God, Creator and Preserver of all, who holdest the waters in the hollow of Thy hand, and hast declared that in the great day of the resurrection the sea shall give up the dead that are in it.” He stops for a moment to look at John. “Grant unto us, that as we now commit to the great deep the body of our departed brother, we may be able to look up to Thee, our Father, through Christ, and with a sure and certain hope that they who believe shall inherit everlasting life.”

He nods to Mr Smith, who begins pushing Mr Lawrence towards the fire hole.

“Now, O God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of—” George stops, flinching at the splash of the body going into the water. “Blood of the everlasting covenant, make us perfect in every good work, to do Thy will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in Thy sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”

Both John and Mr Smith join him in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and then he finishes: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all. Amen.”

George closes the prayer book and stands with his hands clasped before him, head bowing low.

Even the Arctic winds settle into a respectful silence.

“You needn’t bring that out for me when I go, Kinnaird,” Mr Smith says at last. George hugs the prayer book to his chest, automatic. “Just don’t toss me in the dead room when I do.”

The words stir in him for a while, making him vaguely nauseous. Gnawing his nails between the teeth he has left, he stares at the hammock in which Mr Smith sleeps until he bolts to a stand, tearing up the companionway to look for John. Not in the mess, he finds him in his cabin, sitting at the small desk in the corner. Before him is the ship’s log, long ago amended in John’s hand under Crozier’s last entry: _2 Officers and 6 Men remaining aboard_.

Now there are three.

“Mr Hornby,” George says, startling John. “He’s—he’s down there. And so are Evans and—and—” God, he thinks, fisting a hand in his hair, what was the other boy called? “They’re down there, in the hold, we need to—”

“Calm yourself down, George,” John says, standing to take a hold of him by the shoulders and give him a shake. “There’s no use for that. The rats will have gotten right the way through them by now,” he tells him. “Going down there, it’ll only upset you.”

“But we need to bury them—”

“No, no we don’t,” John says, but not with malice. He eases the hand from George’s hair and presses a kiss to the whitened knuckles. His lips are rough, but the kiss is not. “Hush now, you’ll wake Luke with all your crying.”

George touches his dirty sleeve to his cheek and rubs it over his nose. He sniffs, nodding his understanding, then drops his face into John’s shoulder. There is a soothing shush tickling his ear as he holds on for dear life, quietening down until the sorrowful moan that escapes him is contained somewhere deep in his throat and dies.


	8. on reaching the end of a voyage

_“If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”_ — PSALM CXXXIX. 9.

*

Abaft the cable tier, on the port side, is the boatswain’s storeroom.

George holds a lantern aloft, shining a light on the miscellanea of hooks, thimbles and—communication cylinders. The box is open, revealing a neat row of them, each one caked in a layer of dust. Very few are missing, George thinks as he reaches inside to take one and tucks it under his arm.

Then George slowly makes his way back up to John’s cabin, tender as he goes, where the other man is filling out a note to the Admiralty. The space for the date lays empty, as does the latitude and longitude. Beneath it, John has crossed out _Commander_ , replaced it with _Boatswain, remaining officer aboard_ and signed his own name. The note is a simple one:

_On Orders of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, Her Majesty’s ship Terror was manned and sailed South through strait westward of Victoria Land. Wintering due North of McGillivray Bay, South-SouthWest King William Land._

It is all barely legible.

“Do you reckon the Admiralty’d have us hung for getting so lost?” George asks, setting the copper canister down on the table.

John breathes out a laugh as he finishes, touching the drying ink with the edge of his finger. “I reckon they might,” he says, neatly rolling up the form and sliding it inside, “but only for not following _their_ orders, among other things.”

George ponders _other things_ , smiling as he watches John rise to stand. Gently, he touches his face with the side of his thumb, following the hard curve of his eye socket where the skin lingers dark like a bruise. His eyes hurt all the same, like he has perpetually lived with his face turned towards the sun. Where she hides in this void, George does not know, but he always imagines her dropping off the horizon and into the sea, lost for the time, beneath the ice.

But the sun will return and do well yet—of this George has no doubt.

He is as equally as aware that they will not as John eases him down into his berth, nose pressed permanently into the crook of his neck. He only leaves him, for a mere second, to collect another of his blankets from the chair. They arrange themselves under them like lovers might, George’s head on John’s breast. An idle hand cups his backside, but there is no passion left in his flesh to rise to such a touch.

George is rotting.

Like stolen fruit from the market, putrid beneath the skin. _Serves you right_ , the matron would say before bringing the birch down on his hand.

George lifts his hand from where it cradles John’s ribcage and looks at it. He is not an old man—he will never be an old man—but his hands are withered, worn, rough. Incapable, one might say, of a delicate touch. _But I am_ , he thinks, nuzzling his cheek to John’s chest, rising and falling like the gentle bob of the open sea. _I always have been._

John, too, moves his hand, bringing it to rest at George’s nape. He flattens down the hair there.

“I could go like this,” he says quietly.

Peace. That is all that is left in their prayers. They have both truly dwelled long enough in this strange place, in this suffering, and they are long overdue the sweet mercy to wash the taste of blood from their mouths. George knows this in the grate of his bones, and yet he tightens his hold on John, as though it might keep him here a little longer. Anchored to him in the final perilous waters of their lives, he does not want to let go.

“But you can’t,” George says, because there is no use in being selfless now. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” John promises.

George closes his eyes, thinks, yes, this is not a happy ending, like in Mr Hornby’s books, but this is the ending he has chosen, without regret. Then, for the first time in a long time, George sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> i made a lil [fic post](https://withoutend.tumblr.com/post/638750460768141312/prayers-for-sailors-preface-morning-prayer) on tumblr, should you be inclined to share the skeleton bois


End file.
